While it's not quite there yet, MEC may soon be able to replicate the reach of a footy final on TV with online video.
One of the long-standing advantages of TV over other mediums is that it is a mass broadcast tool which can reach a lot of people very quickly. This is magnified during big events such as a footy final or reality show final.
However, while MEC is not at that point yet, it's looking into this and is on the path to doing so, thanks to a study undertaken by its digital team.
It undertook a year-long study looking at the reach and frequency of online video campaigns, trying to answer an entirely different question.
“We often get asked, how much do we need to spend to get a percentage or a total of this audience?,” Head of digital Guillame Goudal told AdNews. “The TV guy is going to come back and and say 'X amount',”
“How much do I need to spend online to reach 50% of my target audience in the next three weeks? 95% of online planners won' be able to answer that question.”
With TV, MEC is able to answer the question with a fair degree of accuracy. It knows how many TARPS (total audience ratings point) is can deliver over a week, given a budget of $100,000.
Mostly because it has run so many TV campaigns in the past that client by client it can accurately predict the metrics around the campaign.
However, trying to answer that question with online video was proving difficult.
So MEC's senior manager of the entertainment team, Matteo Resta, started to track reach and frequency of online campaigns over a year.
It seems that it should have been able to do this already, but according to Resta the tools to track campaigns accurately and come up with a reliable online reach curve only became available fairly recently.
MEC soon found that if a client was to run a campaign targeting the same audience four or five times a year, it could come up with a pretty accurate average reach curve for the campaign.
“Ultimately, what we want to do is be able to compare the amount of reach you would get [for an online video campaign] to what you would get on TV, so you can properly get them to work together.” Resta said.
Aside from being able to answer simple client questions about running an online video campaign, MEC's research yielded a raft of insights about how online video and TV compare and contrast.
For example, it now knows digital campaigns require more time than TV – especially in the early seeding phase – to reach a consistent portion of people in the target demographic.
However, that's without tweaking the formula.
While the reach curves are plotted client by client, and MEC is constantly tweaking the formula, it thinks it is able to replicate TV reach with an online campaign by adjusting the parameters of the buy in the planning phase.
“The speed-to-reach is something you get on TV,” Goudal said. “If you plan and you buy a big TV show then your speed-to-reach is going to be very quick, but how many times a year does that happen?”
“There are only so many footy finals.”
He claimed that with the right combination of homepage buys, it is able to reach 30% to 40% of the target audience within a few hours.
“So, when you start to understand the curve you can get online, and you compare the curve to what you get on TV you can start to replicate those results by trying different things, and you can make them work together,” Goudal said.
Goudal and Resta were quick to point out, that at this stage, TV still does a better job of an immediate reach play than online, but that could change.
“For a time we were planning TV first and then getting other channels to increase the reach,” Resta said.
“Now if you know your curves enough, you can start online for a few days and then get TV to achieve reach play on top of it.”
Goudal and Resta insist they're not quite at that point yet, but they are close enough to it to start talking about it with key clients.
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